


Once I was twenty years old, my story got told

by Ginny_Potter



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, F/M, First War with Voldemort, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Marauders' Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 10:50:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17242907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ginny_Potter/pseuds/Ginny_Potter
Summary: We are just eighteen.James looks old.We are just eighteen.Sirius would use a Zonko device to fight Death Eaters, as if they were still at Hogwarts, pranking classmates.We are just eighteen.Peter mistakes espionage for quality time with his friends.We are just eighteen.Remus, always the thinker, has a bad feeling about this – as though it’s the beginning of the end.





	Once I was twenty years old, my story got told

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aryastark_valarmorghulis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aryastark_valarmorghulis/gifts).



> Hello everyone!  
> This is my first fic on the Marauders and I am so nervous about it.  
> It's all [ aryastark_valarmorghulis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aryastark_valarmorghulis/pseuds/aryastark_valarmorghulis)'s fault. So if I messed up character's characterisations it's all her fault for dragging me back into the Potter fandom after twelve years in Azkaban.  
> I am not a native speaker so please feel free to point out mistakes.  
> The title comes from "7 years" by Lukas Graham which I have been listening nonstop for like three days.  
> What else?  
> Oh yes! Happy New Year!

 

Remus

**Summer 1978**

 

_I’m just eighteen._

Remus thinks, as Dumbledore gives him his first mission. It’s a whine in his head and at the same time it’s a roar of pride – how can it be, he couldn’t say.

_I’m just eighteen_

_– I should be applying for jobs and being rejected and try again and get drunk when I get the first shitty one._

_I’m just eighteen_

_– this is a huge responsibility, wow, Dumbledore really trusts me, I must be good, this is… I can make a difference, even if I am… what I am._

“I can’t wait to kick some Death Eater arse.”

Sirius throws an arm around Remus’ neck as soon as they get out of the Hog’s Head. He smiles and looks at him sideways. His hair is messy as usual, and he is smugly proud of the stubble that has been growing since they left Hogwarts – before he always shaved, _For McGonagall_ , he used to say, _the only woman who deserves my undying love, Remus_.

Peter laughs nervously, looking around as if he is expecting to see a hooded figure jump out of the mountain of rubbish piled up against the side wall of the nasty pub. Sirius hits his shoulder with a friendly punch: “What?”

Peter shrugs: “I am just happy Dumbledore gave us something we can do together.”

Remus smiles and disentangles himself from Sirius’ hold, much for his dismay, just to pat Peter slightly on his arm. He knows that Peter believes he is the only one who took badly the forced separation after the end of their seventh year, but he is well aware that they all are suffering through it in different ways. They are all back to their homes – James and Sirius at the Potters’ in their huge estate in Somerset, he in Southern Wales, at his dad’s, and Peter at his mom’s in West Suffolk – but Sirius had apparated in his kitchen at least three times in two weeks, bringing pies and rambling about money he had just inherited from a disowned uncle and James had written him a long too-much-information letter on how his seventy-year-old dad almost walked on him and Lily doing things a seventy-year-old father should never see his only son doing and _Moony we really need a maraudery place to do maraudery things_. Remus, always the thinker, has started circling housing advertisements absentmindedly on the _Prophet_ with green ink every morning, as he sips his daily tea.

Sirius grimaces dramatically: “I know you miss me, Wormtail. Sometimes I miss myself. I am such good company.”

Remus rolls his eyes, then looks left and right, they have almost reached Zonko: “Where is James? I thought he was behind us.”

“Probably snogging Evans to remember the good old Hogwarts’ times.” Sirius answers, peeping in the window of the shop.

Peter lifts himself on his toes, as to try and spot James somewhere: “I don’t think they ever snogged at the Hog’s Head, Padfoot.”

Remus imitates him: “Yeah, that would be more your style, Pads.”

Sirius looks quite pleased: “It is certainly more hardcore than Madam Puddifoot’s.” he pauses “And I refuse to believe my best mate would ever set foot in Madam Puddifoot’s.”

Remus gives him a look: “Oh, James would. _Lily_ would never.”

As though evoked, James and Lily appear on the threshold of the Hog’s Head, they are talking very quickly, their heads close. After a short exchange they both nod at the same time, James kisses Lily on the top of her head – Sirius makes a gagging sound – and she turns on herself, disapparating. Remus studies the tense expression on James’ face, as he approaches them: his lips are a thin line. He glances at Sirius to see if he noticed, but he is too busy examining a new device which looks like a mouse trap with some kind of Engorgement Charm – if someone stumbles upon it, promises the advertisement, it becomes a human-sized mouse trap.

“I wonder if that could be useful to cut the legs of my dear cousin. You choose which one, Pete.”

Peter snickers. Remus looks back at James, who is near and not as troubled as moments before. Maybe he just imagined it. They look at each other and James smiles faintly. He didn’t imagine it.

_We are just eighteen._

James looks _old_.

_We are just eighteen._

Sirius would use a Zonko device to fight Death Eaters, as if they were still at Hogwarts, pranking classmates.

_We are just eighteen._

Peter mistakes espionage for quality time with his friends.

_We are just eighteen._

Remus, always the thinker, has a bad feeling about this – as though it’s the beginning of the end. _Gut is not ratio_ , he tells himself. The plan is simple and well organised, and nothing will happen to them. Dumbledore would never put them in danger. Dumbledore would never play with the lives of eighteen-year-olds. He gave them a mission which is right for them. He values them. He knows they can fight. He knows they can help people, people like Lily, people like the Muggles that live next door to Peter and brought them pudding that time, when they were sixteen and spent Christmas at Mrs Pettigrew’s. They can do this.

 _We are together_ , Remus thinks, as he watches James’ added age falling down from his shoulders as Sirius drags him towards Zonko’s windows, explaining him how they could modify the human mouse trap into something really able to maim Bellatrix Black. He squeezes Peter’s shoulder: “I am happy too, Wormtail.”

Hogwarts looms in the distance, beautiful against the fading summer sky, Hogwarts with its memories and with everything Remus holds dear.

_We are eighteen. And we are together. And it’s enough._

* * *

James

**Autumn 1979**

 

“She is pregnant.”

James knows he must have a manic look in his eyes.

Sirius looks at him as though he has grown a second head. Thinking about it, he didn’t look like that even when he _did_ actually grow a second head after his Multiplying Potion exploded in third year.

Peter is the first to jump up from their sofa – James misses a beat when he realises he is still thinking about it as _their_ sofa. Well, it is actually Sirius and Remus’ sofa, it had been their sofa, for the short period of time they all lived together, before everything became messed up, before the attacks spun out of control, before Lily whispered in his ear, her fear hidden in the dark, her voice croaked, _There’s no time, James_ , before Peter had to move back home _again_ to take care of his mum, before they weren’t eighteen anymore.

“Congratulation, Prongs!” Peter exclaims, wrapping his short arms around him. James pats him on the shoulder, babbling a thanks, but his eyes are still on Sirius and Sirius is still looking at him as to say _Are you utterly out of your fucking mind, James?_ and he never calls him James, never. He hasn’t actually, not with words, but he can read Sirius, he is his best mate, has been his best man, he is going to be his child’s… Okay, that was fast. Way to go, crazy mind of James Potter. Hold the horses. He is still patting Peter, when Remus walks towards the petrified Sirius and whispers something in his ear. James can see him relax, as if Remus had casted a Finite Incantatem, and lifts a corner of his mouth. Peter steps back and looks like the only one who is genuinely happy to hear the news.

It _is_ good news. Life is always good news. _There is already so much death, Pads_. James wants to say but he cannot bring himself to.

Remus’ hand is on the bottom of Sirius’ back. James knows it means something, but Lily is pregnant and he cannot bring himself to… _Please, Padfoot_. He wants to say. _Please, say something._ Remus pushes and Sirius stumbles and their eyes meet again and Sirius doesn’t look like James has grown a second – oh, whatever, a _third_ – head anymore.

“Fuck’s sake, Prongs, I really hope the munchkin gets Evans’ brains because you look like a mountain troll who hit himself with his own club.”

James lets his breath out and he is laughing and he hasn’t even noticed he was holding his breath in the first place. And suddenly Sirius is hugging him, his grip strong and his hands grasping the fabric of his winter cloak – and he didn’t even undresses, he just stepped out of the chimney and blurted out _She’s pregnant_.

“It’s good.” Sirius growls against his ear and James clings to him like a castaway even when Sirius draws back a little to take his head between his hands, his grey eyes so dark they look like iron: “It’s good, Prongs.”

 _We will protect them._ He is saying. _We are together_.

James nods and Sirius nods, stepping back.

Remus’ grasp is lighter, more tender. James thinks irrationally that probably Remus will be the best at holding the baby: “You’ll be a fucked up great dad, James.” he says and James thinks Remus never swore before, Sirius must really be a bad influence. Nevertheless, Remus has happy tears at the corner of his eyes and Sirius is throwing his arm around Remus’ neck and messing up his hair, so he cannot read Remus – not that he is _exactly_ able to, he is not Sirius, he doesn’t wear his feelings on his sleeve.

“You are such a sensitive soul, Moony.” Sirius is teasing but he is smiling, and Remus disentangles himself from his grasp and they push each other around and Peter is chuckling too and James cannot help but widening his smile.

“Merlin, I am going to be a father.”

Sirius howls, then he jumps on the sofa, which creaks dangerously: “Elvendork!” he yells dramatically.

“Get down, Sirius! We just have one sofa!” Remus tries to sound menacing, but he is smiling and suddenly they are back in Gryffindor common room – where that sofa comes from, now that James thinks about it – and Sirius is throwing one of his dramatic scenes because of Slytherins or pranks or McGonagall and Prefect Remus is trying to do his job.

“Elvendork, Moony!” Sirius repeats, pointing his finger.

James grins, jumping up at Sirius’ side and the sofa screeches like a banshee.

“What the hell is an Elvendork, Sirius?” Remus looks lost and James laughs, grasping Sirius arm to maintain his balance.

“Elvendork is unisex.” He answers wisely, as if he is explaining something very simple to a slightly dumb child.

Peter shakes his head: “Don’t even try, Moony.” He says, moving around him and getting to the kitchen door “Do you two bachelors have something to toast with?”

Sirius opens his mouth to answer.

“No Firewhisky, Sirius, this creature already has a crazy father, we won’t tell them we celebrated the news with Firewhisky.”

Remus looks at the same time impressed and amused by Peter’s stance: “Let me check.” He says, and his ears are slightly red. Odd.

James wobbles and turns towards Sirius when they disappear beyond the kitchen’s threshold.

They look at each other and they don’t need words.

 _We are just nineteen._ Sirius voice is saying in James’ head. _When did we stop clogging the Slytherins’ toilets and start killing them? When did we stop talking about a future which looked so far away and start living it? When did we stop skipping class and start skipping steps?_

 _There’s no time, James_. Lily said that night, in that same apartment.

“We are together.” James says, looking sternly into Sirius’ grey eyes.

Sirius nods, then grins a wolfish smile: “Elvendork Evans Potter sounds so cool, mate.” 

* * *

 

 

 Peter

**Winter 1980**

 

Lily’s belly is starting to swell.

Peter notices one night at the pub. She is taking off her cloak and her red hair swings in the air, capturing the faint light. He can get why James fell for her so utterly and completely. She takes off her cloak and her jumper rises a bit up the hem of her tartan skirt and he can see a slight bump. Peter blinks.

_What’s happening? We are just twenty years old._

Lily has been taking points from them since the day before, all freckles and frowns on her chubby child-like face. But she is pregnant now.

Peter gulps down a generous sip of beer, his hands are shaking. He noticed his hands have started shaking more and more over the last few months. They probably started doing it after Hogwarts, when he had to go back home – even if for a short time. It had been awful, walking back in a ten-year-old room he didn’t remember as his own. Yes, of course, during the summer he did come home over the years, but in a way or the other he always ended up on trips with his mother or visiting his friends at the Potters’, so he never really… bothered. It had been quite shocking the first night, when he had looked up at the ceiling and found magical stars wandering above him. His hands had started to shake then, like his whiskers when the he had seen the wolf for the first time.

Peter closes his fists and Sirius gives him a strange look. He manages a tight smile.

“So, Sirius, when are you coming over to help us paint the baby’s room?” Lily is smirking, elbows on the table.

Remus suffocates in his beer, unable to not burst into a laugh.

Sirius looks outraged: “To paint?” he repeats, like she asked him to ride a dragon. Thinking about it, Sirius would probably jump up at the mere chance of riding a dragon.

James is smirking too: “She wants to do it the Muggle way.” He explains.

“Of course I do.” Lily looks at James sideways “It helps with the bonding.”

Sirius doesn’t look persuaded: “They are like a bean in your belly, Evans. How can you bond with a bean?”

“The reason, Pads, is that you cannot stand to have your royal hands sticky with varnish.” Even Remus is smirking.

Maybe Peter’s hands will stop shaking.

Sirius frowns: “You know, lads, the royalty house joke is _seriously_ ” he wiggles his eyebrows and Remus rolls his eyes “getting old.”

Lily throws a chip towards Sirius and it gets stuck in his long hair. Sirius shrieks betrayal and they start bickering about trimming them. James is smiling and Remus is smiling and Peter wraps his hands around the beer because they cannot stop shaking.

Peter looks at Lily who is throwing her long red locks behind her shoulder, carefree and amused at something Sirius said and he thinks _When did it happen?_ Of course, Lily has always been present in their lives, but at the beginning she was just James’ unhealthy obsession, someone his friend never shut up about, but she was _on the outside_. She was just James’ crush, someone to avoid when they schemed, an _enemy_ of the sort. Peter never really thought that she would become a part of them. _She isn’t a Marauder_. He thinks. She is all right and James looks in awe every time she appears in his field of vision as though he cannot believe his luck in landing her – as Sirius repeats at least twice every time they are all together – but she was not supposed to… be there. At this table, laughing with his friends, _intruding_.

The pint explodes in his hands.

Silence falls on the table.

Peter is breathing hard, looking astounded at the fragments of glass and at the liquid that is dripping everywhere. Sirius has a cut on his right cheekbone.

“Are you alright, Wormtail?” he asks, and he sounds genuinely worried, not minding the fact that his magic has almost blinded him with a shard of glass.

Remus is already cleaning up his mess and James is reassuring the barman who is shouting at them that they have to pay for the glass – he would not accept a clumsy Reparo.

Remus’ charm is nothing but clumsy, of course, and the mug looks even better than before. Sirius is still looking at him, waiting for an answer: the skin around the cut is reddening. Peter draws his wand and points it to Sirius face. Nobody flinches.

(They would start in a couple of months.)

“Episkey.” He mumbles and Sirius’ wound disappears. The skin is still quite irritated, though. “Sorry.” He adds “I don’t know what got into me.”

Then he notices that James’ hand is on Lily’s belly and her smaller one is covering his. He wonders if they realised it.

_We are just twenty. Get a grip, Prongs._

“I should probably go home, I don’t feel well.”

Sirius looks confused, Remus looks worried, but when he gets up nobody follows straightaway.

If he didn’t turn on himself and disapparate to anywhere but his mother’s house, he would have heard Sirius’ _Peter! What’s wrong? Come on, mate!_ and Remus’ hand would have managed to grasp his sleeve to keep him there and he would have found out that James had immediately apparated on his doorstep for the bewilderment of his mother, who was watering the peonies before nightfall.

* * *

 

 

Sirius

**Spring 1981**

 

Sirius is smoking. He is perched on the window frame and one of his legs is dangling in the void.

It’s late and the moon is full.

It’s the first full moon in six years that he is alone. It’s an odd thought. It’s an odd night. It’s an odd moon. The smoke is moulding in odd shapes: if he ever paid attention in Divination class, he could probably read a fucked up fate in it.

_Where the fuck are you going?_

_I can’t tell you._

_It’s a Full in four days!_

_Do you think I don’t know, Sirius?_

It had been James’ birthday four days before. They were supposed to go to his place and eat dinner and have cake and play with baby Harry and whatever. They were supposed to fake having fun. They were supposed to ignore for a night that people are dying and families are disappearing and that Dumbledore is moving them like pawns on a chessboard. Once, when he was mending the first really bad cut on his arm – a hex from Dolohov, after a recce mission in Derby – nineteen-year-old Remus had told Sirius _Dumbledore couldn’t know it was a trap. He doesn’t play with lives._ Sirius had flinched and gritted his teeth because his skin was sizzling and it hurt like hell and he didn’t say anything, but twenty-two-year-old Sirius wanted to bark his most bitter laugh _It is exactly what he is doing_.

They were supposed to forget, just for one night. But Remus had to fill a bag with underwear and shirts not telling him where he was going, not telling him how he planned on coping with the full moon, not even lying to him with promises that he will be back.

“Fuck you, Moony.” He mumbles, looking at the full moon, so bright in the sky.

It is all crumbling down. He doesn’t need a fucking third eye to notice it. He looks at the cold fireplace: maybe he could floo to James’, hop Harry on his knee, make him laugh. He is good at making Harry laugh. He has always been good at making people laugh. Also cry in frustration and anger and disappointment.

_Why isn’t Dumbledore giving us shared missions anymore?_

_I couldn’t say._

_Is this_ really _something Dumbledore told you to do?_

_No, Sirius, I’m going on vacation. What the fuck do you think I am going to do?_

Sirius had gone silent. _I don’t fucking know Remus, because you don’t talk to me anymore_. He had wanted to shout and he had wanted to grasp him by his shoulders and he had wanted to fucking shake him as hard as humanly possible, he had wanted to hear his organs rattle inside his body like marbles in a box. He had wanted to kiss him, kiss him for real, not only tongue and teeth and blood, as it had become customary for them in the last few months.

James talks a lot. About Lily, about Harry, about diapers and war and bottles and death and teddy bears and Death Eaters. Sometimes Sirius just stops listening.

Peter talks only when someone asks him questions.

Sirius doesn’t know if he does talk, actually. He mainly shouts. And makes things explode. And lights flicker. And he feels alive only when he is risking his life in some godforsaken mission Dumbledore pushed him into. He often wonders if Dumbledore hopes he will get himself killed in some brave exploit, just to get rid of his unpredictable nature.

“It’s full moon.”

Sirius flinches and almost falls out of the window, but a hand grasps his jumper and he loses his balance and collapses on the floor, limbs tangled with the intruder’s.

“Fuck, Padfoot, you are squishing my sternum.”

“Fuck you, James, I almost fell out of a window because of you.” He punches him on his shoulder for good measure.

They look at each other.

“I was thinking it's the first full moon in six years that we are not together.” James says and Sirius notices the hard lines on his forehead and at the sides of his mouth, hard lines that are supposed to be there in twenty years for all the laughs they shared but they are not and James has never been so blunt and direct and Sirius thinks _Fuck, Prongs, you are supposed to be twenty-one and you look ancient_.

Sirius gets up and offers him a hand and James grasps it, allowing him to pull him up. Sirius doesn’t need to tell him he was thinking the same. James knows.

_Do you know where Dumbledore sent him?_

_If I did I would already be there, Prongs, don’t you think?_

A breath.

_Happy fucking birthday to me._

They both lean against the window frame and Sirius lights a fag snapping his fingers and he thinks _It always makes Remus smile_. and they share it and _shit, I’m so fucked up_.

James is looking at the moon and then his hazel eyes shift a little: “He’s not alone.”

“He fucking is.”

“No, look at that.”

He points at the only shining star, not so far from the pearly globe and yet so bright.

_Sirius. Canis Maior._

Sirius wants to make a gagging sound, wants to push him and tell him Evans fried his already atrophied brain, he wants to tell him he is going to give him that Muggle illness where you have too much sugar in your blood. He would, if he was twenty-two. But he is not. Not really. He takes a lungful of smoke.

“We are ancient, Prongs.”

* * *

 

 

Remus – James – Peter – Sirius

**Autumn 1981**

 

_I haven’t seen my friends in weeks, Dumbledore, please, don’t make me go up north. It’s Halloween in two days, we are going to meet at Peter's and then head to James and Lily’s._

 

_You are going to become a Quidditch champion, Harry! Yes, yes, do you see it Lily? He’s a natural, just like is father!_

 

_T-they made me their Secret Keeper, my Lord._

 

_Prongs? No, no, no, no, no, no._

 

 They were supposed to be twenty-one.

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own any of this (except for the Multiplying Potion). I am just having fun.


End file.
